


Rhēma

by Ambyrfire



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime)
Genre: @myself why do you write so much slaine and nao, AZ Secret Santa 2015, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 08:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5532689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambyrfire/pseuds/Ambyrfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>rhēma (Greek)– “that which is said”</i>
</p>
<p>That was the way of the words; anyone could say anything, to your face or behind your back, and there it was. A record of what the world thought you were. But they didn’t– couldn’t– know you, really. They would mark you up like an alleyway wall, spit on you like a city sidewalk, but it could never go deeper than the surface.</p>
<p>No human being can be carved down to a list of words, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhēma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Misurabu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misurabu/gifts).



> My entry for the AZ Secret Santa on twitter. I don't think it really matched with any of the receiver's requests, sorry! Hope you enjoy this anyway. <3
> 
> This was inspired by a pair of lovely fics (which were inspired by a prompt based on yet another fic, and so the inspiration chain continues on) that I read back in my SNK fandom days. The AU premise is that the words and phrases that people say about you show up on your skin. The more a word is said, the larger and/or darker it becomes. It’s a very interesting concept to me and I love the possibilities of the idea, so I’ve been longing to combine it with AZ– and here you go!

_ Odd. Weird. Quiet. Strange _ . The words were flung at Inaho like pieces of gravel, but he took them and stacked them in neat columns and rows across his back. The varied multitude of sizes and letters spread over his skin like a typography piece. He didn’t bother to look at them, but they were worth keeping track of all the same.

_ Scary. Scary _ kid, people had whispered behind their hands, and even after Inaho and Yuki had left the orphanage, the word got darker on his skin. He didn’t mind, though. The words could pile up. It didn’t make him care any more about what others said about him.

_ Smart _ and  _ sharp _ and  _ intelligent _ and  _ clever _ marched their way over his collarbones, overlapping and linking together in a twisting chain.

_ Cold _ and  _ frightening _ joined  _ scary _ , tossed his way by teachers and classmates.  _ Strange _ darkened and grew. Yuki worried over the words, more than she should have and more often than she should need to, but he always reassured her that it was fine. Really.

(There were two words that curled around each other over his heart, one bright and solid, the other faint because it had gone unspoken for years now, the lips that formed it long departed. Sometimes he pressed his hand against them to try and ease the soft ache that clung there like mist, like memory.

_ Brother _ , and next to it, lighter because it had been silent for so long,  _ son _ .)

 

—

 

After the fall of the Frozen Elysium, Inaho’s eyes had widened for a brief second when he looked in the mirror and saw  _ hero _ etched onto his left eyelid. It did not take the analytical engine’s sharp observational ability to see how swiftly the word darkened. With every Count he eliminated with calculated efficiency, it became stronger.

He resisted the urge to try to scrub it away in the shower. Words didn’t come off. Not with soap and water, at least.

As the fighting went on, the word  _ savior _ had drawn itself on his upper right arm, like an insignia. He didn’t know what he thought of that. Savior? He merely did what he had to. Protected those he cared about.

_ Savior _ . Written there, on the arm with which he pointed a gun at Slaine’s calmly smiling face.  Inaho looked into those dull, resigned eyes and felt the word, burning and heavy against his skin.

 

———

 

That was the way of the words; anyone could say anything, to your face or behind your back, and there it was. A record of what the world thought you were. But they didn’t– couldn’t– know you, really. They would mark you up like an alleyway wall, spit on you like a city sidewalk, but it could never go deeper than the surface.

No human being can be carved down to a list of words, anyway.

 

———

 

One of the first words traced into Slaine’s skin as a boy was  _ sweet _ , and he had prodded it with fascination.  _ Sweet _ boy, so  _ cute _ .  _ Son _ was another early word: never very dark, but he pressed his palm against it on his chest, beneath where his father’s pendant rested, and held it close anyway.

(It faded, more and more, as they years went on. He feared waking up one day to see it gone entirely.)

On Vers, they gave him many, many new words.  _ Terran _ grew broad and black across his chest like ink, surrounded by a swarm of other little crawling-insect words flung at him by the dozen:  _ filth, rat, useless, burden, dog, weak, stupid, unwanted. Terran, terran, terran.  _ Beaten into him with fist and cane. Sewn through with lashes of the whip, scar tissue drawing red lines through the black.

Some nights, when he woke screaming and soaked with sweat, he felt the words burn against his skin again, like electricity coursing through his bones, like the bite of a whip.

 

—

 

Slaine had flushed hotly when Harklight traced the words, writ across his shoulder blades like wings, that Harklight himself had whispered there:  _ champion _ to the left,  _ inspiration _ to the right. They were as delicate and soft as his loyal servant’s touch, and meant just as much to Slaine.

He had no need to check in a mirror and see if the words were really there; he trusted Harklight. And that was all he needed to know.

 

—

 

He smiled for Lemrina and felt  _ liar _ crackle like hot coals against his hip. She hadn’t been the first to put it there, but he didn’t begrudge her of it. She deserved to pin the word against him more than anyone else did.

 

—

 

That first night Slaine removed the new count’s uniform from his shoulders, and caught sight of his reflection–

_ Son _ stood out against his skin like a fresh wound, darker than it had been for many lingering, aching years.

He allowed himself one short moment of weakness, one long, shivering breath with his eyes shut tight against the pain cutting through his chest. Then, he moved on.

_ Powerful _ and  _ charismatic _ wound over his forearms, like dark veins.  _ Driven _ grew darker every day under the sleeves of his uniform. As did  _ manipulative _ . Slaine tried to avoid looking at them. It wasn’t difficult, after as many years of practice as he‘d had, pretending not to see the violence engraved on his skin.

Trident base burned, and _ monster _ circled his neck in great, dark, bold letters, growing heavier every day. Some days, it felt as though it were tightening around his throat like a noose. He adjusted the collar of his red, red uniform higher and ignored it.

Hundreds, thousands, died under his command, as Asseylum opened her eyes once more and looked up in happy, empty bliss at the false sky that he had given her.  _ Devil _ crawled up alongside  _ monster _ like a spider, scraping long black limbs over the column of his throat. He swallowed tightly, and tasted nothing but bile.

_ There was no going back. _

 

—

 

“You’re intriguing,” Inaho had said to him one day, and suddenly the origin of the word that spread down his calf in the years of the war was obvious.

“Really?” he had laughed, crossing his arms over his chest to shield against the sudden wave of uncertainty it raised in him.

“Yes,” Inaho said simply. “You are.”

“Like a game? Like some kind of puzzle?”

“Every person is a puzzle.”

Slaine had looked away, trying to avoid that eye– only to catch sight of the edge of a word above Inaho’s collar. Half-concealed, but he could still read it.  _ Kind _ . Who had put that there? What had led them to say that about Inaho Kaizuka, of all people? “Especially you. I don’t know why you persist in this.”

“In what?”

“Wasting your time. Coming here.”  _ It’s obvious what I am. It’s emblazoned on my neck for all to see. Why don’t you just heed the warning? Spit on me. Cast me away. Hate me. _

“I want to. You are… fascinating.”

He wanted Inaho to stop this, stop this game, stop toying with him, stop leaving words on his body that he could only stare at in the half-light of his cell every night, waiting for them to vanish away as he was forgotten and left behind as he always had been.

 

—

 

On his left wrist,  _ killer _ was cut in jagged lines into his skin. On his right,  _ friend _ rested, soft with swirling letters as beautiful as the voice that had left it. One day, without warning, he could take it no longer and tore at them with nails and teeth until the prison staff tied him to the bed. He had screamed and thrashed and sobbed until exhaustion claimed him, that day.

(Much, much later, Inaho would kiss the scars there and press his own palm with the word  _ killer _ dark upon it against its twin on Slaine’s wrist.

There were other words tangled like wires around Inaho’s fingers as well.  _ Machine. Efficient. Asset _ . It made half of Slaine want to laugh, and the other half of him want to weave their blood-soaked hands together and never let go.)

 

—

 

The first time Inaho saw the word  _ whore _ printed dark and vicious on the inside of Slaine’s thigh, he had placed a hand over it with strange gentleness and kissed the skin there, and Slaine trembled at the touch.

 

—

 

In the deep edges of the night, where Slaine hovered in the space between darkness and awareness, he could half-hear, half-feel Inaho breathe a word into the back of his neck that burned strangely over his spine. He didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.

He could have looked, with a mirror. He could have. Sometimes, he wondered if he should have. Just to be sure.

But he didn’t.

 

—

 

(The word was:  _ beloved. _ )

**Author's Note:**

> I have a "bonus chapter" in mind, in which I'd expand on this AU with some of the other AZ characters– anyone interested?


End file.
